The World: Ulster's Price Sisters: Breaking the Long Fast Monday, June 17, 1974

So wrote TIME back in 1974 whne the sisters were on hunger strike 200 days and forcefed 400 times each !

Each day passes and we fade a little more. But no matter how the body may fade, our determination never will. We have geared ourselves for this and there is no other answer.Dolours Price, May 27 letter to her motherSometimes we can achieve more by death than we could ever hope to living. We 've dedicated our lives to a cause and it's supremely more important than any one individual's life.Marion Price, May 27 letter to her motherFate and politics have a way sometimes of cheating would-be martyrs. Belfast's Price sisters.

Today Marian is again being tortured by the British who have interned her without trial in solitary confinement for the last 9 months for her beliefs. Marian needs your help, to sign her petitions and to spread the censored word about her plight.

A long standing respected human rights campaigner and former prison chaplain Monsignor Raymond Murray has stated that the continuing detention of veteran republican Marian Price is internment without trial.

Ms Price was charged with encouraging support for the IRA at an Easter rally in Derry. The judge granted her bail based on the same intelligence reports that the Secretary of State had her ‘release licence’ revoked last May on an offence committed almost 40 years ago. Since then, she has been in solitary confinement prison up to last week.

Monsignor Raymond Murray said:

“This is a form of internment, I am just shocked that the Secretary of State wouldn’t be aware of how serious nationalist people look on internment.We thought it had all ended and here it is coming under a form of revocation, revoking a license.He would have to explain to us and explain the process of law as regards Marian Price.In any way has she broken the law? That would have to be provided but it is not provided by shoving her into prison on a pretence in an unjust way.”

In an article published on Wednesday 14 December 2011 at 03:11, Eamonn McCann explained it in the following manner:

"The continuing imprisonment of Marian Price in Maghaberry is a scandal and would be seen more widely in this light were it not for her politics.

Ms Price is in jail on the order of Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, who signed a document last May ordering the police to put her behind bars.

She had been arrested on May 11th and charged with encouraging support for an illegal organisation. This arose from an action at the 32 Country Sovereignty Movement’s Easter commemoration in Derry city cemetery: on a blustery day, she reached up to hold the script from which a masked representative of the Real IRA was reading the ‘Easter Message’.

Two days later Ms. Price appeared at Bishop Street, where she applied for and was granted bail. She was rearrested when she came out onto the steps of the courthouse.

Mr Patterson had signed a document the previous night purporting to revoke the licence on which she had been released almost 30 years earlier from a life sentence for the 1973 Provisional IRA bombing of the Old Bailey.

If the Derry court had remanded Ms Price in custody, the document would not have been produced. We might not know even now that it existed.

It is not clear whether the prosecution had been aware of the document as it argued against bail. What’s clear is that the bail application had been a farce. The role of the court had been rendered meaningless by Mr Patterson preparing the way in advance to have the decision set aside if it went against his wishes.

This was as blatant an abuse of process as can be imagined.

The offence is compounded by the fact that here is real room for doubt whether Mr Patterson had authority to order Ms Price back to jail in the first place.

Her lawyers insist she had been freed from the Old Bailey sentence on the basis of a Royal pardon and that the terms of the pardon supersede the powers of the Secretary of State.

The lawyers have asked three times for the pardon to be produced. Three times, the State has maintained that no copy can be discovered.

At one point, her solicitor was told that the pardon must either have been lost or somehow been shredded.

Thus, Ms Price has spent the last seven months in Maghaberry, not on the basis of conviction for a crime but because Owen Patterson believes that the State is better off with her out of the way. She is imprisoned without trial - in everyday language, interned.

She is the only woman in an all-male prison and thus, for practical purposes, in solitary confinement. She is 57 years-old and in very poor health and in constant pain. But these are not the main reasons she should be released.

She should be released because it is an affront to justice and to the rights of citizens that she has been denied her liberty, and even denied sight of the evidence which Owen Patterson says he has seen and which he claims entitles him to deny her her liberty.

Rights - or privileges

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the reason there hasn’t been more of a hullaballoo about this matter is that many of those who might have been expected to stand up for civil rights are repelled by Ms Price’s politics.

Which means in turn that the extent to which civil rights are defended in the political mainstream is to some extent at least determined by the political beliefs of whomever is being denied their rights.

This means that the rights we speak of are not rights at all, but privileges to be granted or withheld according to a politician’s judgment of where the State’s interests lie.

The only adequate response is for all who value civil liberties to tell Mr Patterson loudly and with one voice – Free Marian Price now. "

Pat Ramsey an SDLP MLA who has campaigned for Marian from the outset has said that he has been questioned as to why he was fighting for the release of Marian Price.

"This is a personal thing. It is a right cause," he said. "It is injustice. If Marian Price was my sister, my loved one I would be deeply distressed as to the condition of her health. In the last year she has developed chronic medical problems. If she was my sister and she was on the outside I would be taking her to her GP and her GP would be admitting her to hospital immediately. It is that urgent. If there is any decency left in the world she should be at home, or the next best thing, in hospital."

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has called on the Secretary of State to end the “debacle” over the detention of Marion Price, saying.

“Marian Price is entitled to due process and the revoking of her licence by the British Secretary of State and then claiming that the pardon granted to Ms Price cannot be found is completely unacceptable."

“That action by Owen Patterson amounted to detention without trial and runs contrary to natural justice. The justice system needs to be based on human rights protection; the revoking of Marian Price’s licence and the debacle created around the allegedly lost pardon is an attack on her human rights,”

.The national chairperson of the 32CSM Mr Francis Mackey today stated "The violation of Marian Price's human rights demonstrates how far the British government are prepared to go with their policy of internment in an attempt to break republican prisoners. This issue of injustice must be exposed for what it is. The plight of Marian Price stands above any political party or organisation and i urge all concerned about the case to come together in a spirit of unity to secure the release of Marian."

Mr Mackey highlighted the politicised nature of Marian's incarceration and stated "The facts are that Marian wasn’t out on licence for it to be revoked. She received a pardon which the British government now claim cannot be found. Only people power can now bring pressure to bear nationally and internationally on the British government. The move to Hydebank is merely transferring the problem. Marian will still be held in isolation and we hope that she receives the medical treatment she urgently requires."

The 32CSM will be escalating our campaign to highlight the case of Marian Price. With International Women’s day approaching on the 8th of March we urge all women’s groups to join us to highlight the case of a mother, wife and sister who is today interned in a British jail. Support Marian Price and work to secure her release.

Five days ago the Northern Ireland Office in the absence Of Owen Paterson having the balls to explain or make a statement himself said the secretary of state "entirely refutes" the allegation that republican Marian Price is being effectively interned without trial."The secretary of state entirely refutes the allegation that this is internment without trial."

The author is not surprised, its same pish the British have served for the last 40 years treating the Irish as fools and justifying to the world, with their BBC type world service propaganda that their perfidious, insidious, odious INTERNMENT without trial legacy of wartime Britain is appropriate after their much touted bad Friday pish process. The Secretary of State is either a fool a liar or both or perhaps a plain perfidious, insidious, odious, Albion, autocrat?

Because of British Cover Up, Censorship and dis-information the CAUSE of Marian Price had to be divided into 6.